When you hear “industrials,” your first thought might be manufacturing and mechanical equipment.

And then there’s aerospace & defense, which is really just another type of… very large mechanical equipment.

But after you get done manufacturing all this heavy-duty equipment, you still need to transport it to its final destination – and this is where transportation & logistics coverage comes into play.

The full name of the industrials group is “Diversified Industrial Goods & Services.”

The “services” delivered here aren’t so much consulting, HR, or changing font sizes in PowerPoint presentations, but rather moving goods from one point to another.

Here’s your map for today’s interview:

How to punch your ticket and set your destination for transportation & logistics investment banking

Walk through the lay of the land when it comes to covering transportation companies

Circumnavigate the technical aspects of both financial analysis and industry analysis (NB: the sector is “industrials” and the industry is “transportation”)

Discuss the more popular deal types, and where to go after you’ve clocked out of transportation coverage

All Aboard!

Q: So how’d you arrive in the transportation sector?

A: Similar to your other stories on group placement, my story is based on mutual fit. There are perennially popular groups such as consumer / retail and M&A; they attract the most banking analysts without a doubt.

One of my associates once told me, “Your job is to do the task that nobody else wants to do.”

That’s a bit true in this role: the group placement process isn’t perfect, and the end result comes from a mix of fate, luck, and your own quality rapport with your desired group.

In this case, I was drawn to the group because they were hiring and it seemed like an “under-valued and overlooked asset” to me – I’d prefer being in a lesser-known but more promising group vs. a “cool group” that’s about to be downsized.

Any group is better than no group, and just as there are things to complain about – there are things to appreciate as well. :-)

Q: What do people in your group like to read when it comes to following the sector?

I know you’ve mentioned it in other articles, but Dealogic’s industry deal alerts are pretty helpful. If a corporate combination (read: merger or acquisition) or capital raise occurs, you’ll see it through the email alert.

It also gives you a sense of which industry groups are most active – obviously by of how many emails you receive!

Of course, that assumes you are signed up with multiple email addresses… but I didn’t give you that idea.

Laying the Track and Charting the Course: The Ground Transportation Landscape

Q: So what’s the industry like? Give us the overview.

A: Here’show I’d think about it: capital goods encompass companies that manufacture parts and equipment such as for aerospace and defense; so aircraft manufacturers and parts fall under capital goods.

Transportation includes those companies that employ those parts as part of services you pay for.

Under that definition, airlines themselves would fall under transportation.

Something like an auto parts company could be a cross between industrials and consumer, so either the industrials group or the consumer group might cover it, depending on the bank.

Logistics companies focus more on the management of distribution networks and the elements that surround any box in transit: tracking the box, choosing the right carrier, figuring out how to best load a freight car, etc.

A good number of logistics companies really carry out the logistics function as part of their broader product offerings.

See page 51 of “The Logistics Journey” for a more in-depth definition of what constitutes a logistics company.

Genesee & Wyoming notes that “local operators” report between $20.0 and $31.9 million in revenue and run with less than 350 miles of track.

The definition gets even more detailed when you include interline (switches tracks along the way), local (begins and ends on the same track), and overhead traffic (passes through multiple tracks that aren’t the start or the finish of the journey).

As you probably know, there are two kinds of railroads out there: passenger and freight.

The largest passenger operator in the United States is Amtrak (National Railroad Passenger Corporation), which is actually partially supported by the US government (their annual expenses exceed their revenue by over $1 billion sometimes).

With freight transport, on the other hand, you focus much more on cost effectiveness and you see less instances of government sponsored support in the form of tax breaks or subsidies.

Road (Trucking): Imagine the various ways you can load a vehicle, and you understand this sector in a nutshell.

This area encompasses dedicated trucking, general trucking, and cross-border trucking.

Dedicated trucking can focus on longer-term contracts, with lower driver turnover and higher margins. According to one trucking company, this dedicated service has can be tailor-made and can augment existing trucking capacity.

So if you needed an extra set of trucks to deliver toys around the holidays, you could call up this type of firm.

General trucking refers to the traditional flat-bed, or even refrigerated freight loads, that proceed through one-way movements.

How can a truck beat out a railroad when it comes to transporting goods?

For one, a train can’t go everywhere. So a trucking company can focus itself on regions where there aren’t many tracks, and keep the travel distance as short as possible.

Delivering the Technical Cargo

Q: Would you have any interesting pitch books or fairness opinions to show our readers?

Sometimes, you also see variations of premiums paid in this sector, such as the premium paid compared to the share price 30 days before announcement, the 30-day volume weighted average price, the IPO price, the twelve-month high, the twelve-month low, and so on.

Q: Awesome. What about the key operating ratios when analyzing a transportation company?

A: When it comes to particular line items, I once heard a story about how railroad cars have to be depreciated individually. Then I worked on a railroad deal and didn’t actually see that, so it might be something that an accounting firm’s transaction services department handles.

In this sector, we pay attention to how well a company uses its assets and how that’s reflected in its return on invested capital (definitions vary, but one way to define it is Net Operating Profit After Taxes / Invested Capital. Invested Capital is generally close to Total Debt + Preferred Stock + Equity).

For trucking companies, the more industry-oriented metrics focus on a company’s number of owner-operators and even the number of company drivers.

Owner-operators are akin to employees who own equity in a company, and that creates big differences in motivation.

At the same time, an owner-operator is responsible for his/her own set of operating expenses, so some expense pressure is taken off and passed onto employees.

If you noticed, there are a bunch of consumer / retail companies in this list of road transportation companies.

Naturally, their inventory levels and ability to fund working capital needs will influence whether these clients can hire transportation firms.

Similar to the aviation industry, there is a balance between filling every freight car and not letting any freight car run empty.

There is a bit of price competition among transportation firms, especially if a company chooses to pursue multiple bids on the same mandate. Amassing too many tractors and trailers (idle ones) is a very bad thing.

With rail transportation, the story is much more focused on basic materials – you’ve got metals in the mix too.

The story extends to other commodities such as grains, paper & pulp, oil, gas, and even chemicals.

Seasonality is a big factor, as you would expect. The late third quarter and fourth quarter are the busiest times of the year, with the first quarter of the calendar year usually reporting less demand for transportation services.

The second and third quarters (in North America) provide optimal conditions for capital expenditures.

Government incentives also influence the health of railroad operations. As you might imagine, there are both tax breaks and capital injections that support construction. These two items corroborate the railroad sector as one of those “strategic resources” so important to most countries.

There was a time when The Transportation Group, formed from some guys from Paine Webber, would be on that short list as well.

Be careful not to mix up “transportation boutiques” with leveraged aircraft leasing firms – sometimes there is a bit of overlap, but in most cases they are distinct and banks are on the sell-side, while leasing firms are on the buy-side.

Several of the bulge bracket banks, including Deutsche Bank, maintain transportation coverage that is distinguished from the rest of the industrials department.

You might see professional resources pooled in such an arrangement at the VP level, or even at the analyst level – an analyst might spend his/her time divided between aerospace/defense and transportation. A friend of mine had exactly that experience at RBC Capital Markets.

For the top bulge bracket banks, the list doesn’t change too much from the list for the broader industrial coverage bankers. Expect to see JPMorgan and Citi’s banking teams as leaders on advisory assignments.

Q: What are the more common tasks and deal types in a transportation group?

A: The transportation sector is highly regulated, so you don’t see airline or railroad mergers & acquisitions happening too often.

In some sectors, such as rail, there are very few acquisition targets, limiting M&A activity. Most of the acquisition ideas concern regional players or “short-line” operators.

So you see a lot more capital raising in the industrial sector, specifically on the debt side – these companies usually have solid collateral and stable cash flows, making them ideal candidates for debt.

Genesee & Wyoming specifically cites strategic investments and operations as pillars of its approach to business.

As a result of this relative lack of M&A activity, partnerships, joint ventures, and other “non-M&A deals” can be more common in the sector as well.

Q: Where do transportation professionals move to after punching out?

A: Most go into industrial-related investment funds or head to business school.

Just because you worked in transportation doesn’t mean your experience can’t apply into a more capital goods oriented role.

The skill set is more transferable than what you’d get in a more specialized sector like FIG or real estate, so that helps with lateral and buy-side opportunities.

Q: Any final words of advice?

A: Keep on truckin’!

Seriously, times can get tough and your co-workers can be rough, but you really need to take initiative where you can, and realize that for every whiny professional, there are ten incredibly enthusiastic newbies itching and hungry to take your seat at the table… so don’t take your foot off the pedal.

About the Author

Luis Miguel Ochoa has facilitated a variety of strategic initiatives from corporate acquisitions to new market development. He earned his B.A. in economics from Stanford University where he was a member of the varsity fencing team.

That is good to know that ground transportation is regionally focused. The company I work for has been wanting to find a transportation method for our equipment. I’m glad that most ground transportation will be just in their own region. That would make things very simple for us. Thank you for the information!

Long time fan of your website and purchased a few of your courses as well. I was wondering if you know whether DCF can be used for valuation for certain capex intensive industry such as airlines. I was told by some people that it cant be used due to the capex being sporadic and that affects the free cash flow projection. Thanks a lot.

What about water transportation ? For instance for both passengers and cargo. Would you have any interesting pitch books or fairness opinions to show for water transportation? What about the key operating ratios when analyzing a water transport company?

Thank you for the article, though I did not have time yet to read in detail. Since I exclusively worked with the T&L team during my M&A internship, I still have a knack for the sector. After all it also led me to develop my passion for infrastructure and made me find my true calling in the financial world.

Unfortunately I did not have a lot of project exposure during my internship (it was 2011), so I am happy to see the sector covered on here.

Love your articles and the website, but wanted to offer a correction on some of the interviewee’s comments so readers are best informed. Jackson Square Aviation is a full service aircraft leasing company that was bought this January by Mitsubishi UFJ Lease and Finance. It is the same as an ILFC, AerCap or AirLease and not a transportation boutique in any way shape or form.

I was wondering, which industry would you say was the easiest to conduct DD on and create a merger model for, and which was the hardest? I mean, I can imagine that creating a merger model for a merger between two transportation companies (airlines, for example) is vastly different from merging two high tech companies, but is it possible to say that one merger model would be more difficult to create than the other? That is, if you take the whole process into account from finding the data, to analyzing the financial statements etc.

A merger model is a merger model is a merger model, so it’s not as if you have brand-new features because it’s a new industry. You’re still combining the statements and factoring in acquisition effects. It is more dependent on how detailed *you* need it to be than the industry.

Exception: FIG merger models are different because of deposit divestitures, regulatory capital, and a few other factors that don’t exist in other industries.

Thanks! Hmm, depends on the specific product but most luxury brand goods would probably fall under consumer / retail instead of industrials (which is more for products most people have never heard of).

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